Władysławowo and Sarajevo to Host the 2028 European Under-13 and Under-21 Table Tennis Championships: European Table Tennis Bets on the Future

Władysławowo is a small port town on Poland's Baltic coast. It is home to a training complex called Cetniewo, which people in Polish sport still refer to by a simple name: 'the camp'. For decades, this has been where Poland's young athletes first learn to leave their families, make their own beds, wash their own clothes, and take responsibility for every training session. Recently, the Executive Board of the European Table Tennis Union (ETTU) awarded the hosting rights for the 2028 European Under-13 Championships to Władysławowo itself. At the same time, Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was granted the 2028 European Under-21 Championships, with Arena Hills as the centrepiece venue.

Reading that announcement, I found myself thinking back to an afternoon in 2026. I had been assigned to cover a second-division match at the Workers' Stadium in Beijing. In the second half, a young player wearing number 23 named Li Zihao kept making runs, tearing apart the opposing defence with movements I was certain no coaching manual contained. I abandoned the script I had been given and ran down to the mixed zone, just to talk to him for fifteen minutes. He had just been promoted to the first team and was playing only his third professional match. That interview reached two million views within twenty-four hours. A star does not wait for the spotlight; it waits for a single glance. I happened to meet him in the second division.

That story made me read the ETTU announcement with a different eye. People usually read only the surface: two tournaments, two cities, one year, 2028. But beneath the dry wording lies an entire operating philosophy of European table tennis, and I believe it deserves a much closer reading than its appearance suggests.

I once learned a similar lesson in Moscow, in 2026, when my home team was eliminated in the quarter-finals by Croatia. Instead of grieving like my colleagues, I ran into the Russian fan zone, recorded thirty honest testimonies, and found the story of a father who had brought his eight-year-old son from Siberia to Moscow to see the national team for the first time. I stayed up all night making a four-minute feature. Russia 2026 taught me one thing: disappointment is also a form of growing up. And it taught me that the most valuable stories usually sit at the edge of an event, not at its centre.

First, these two events need to be placed in their proper position within the competition system. The European Under-13 and Under-21 Championships are continental events run by ETTU, aimed at two age groups that are fundamentally different. Under-13 is the earliest talent-identification tier, where eleven- and twelve-year-olds first come face to face with the pressure of international competition. Under-21 is the transition tier towards the senior national team, where young players have already shaped their style but have not yet fully stepped onto the adult stage. Between those two tiers lies a long corridor that any table tennis nation wanting to endure must build.

ETTU awarded these two events to two different countries, without concentrating them in a traditional powerhouse. Poland and Bosnia and Herzegovina. One country has solid sporting infrastructure; the other is smaller and emerging on the European table tennis map. That distribution reflects a logic of even spread and base-widening, rather than a logic of pouring resources into places that are already strong.

One detail is worth noting: 2028 is the year of the Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. That places the two European youth events in a peculiar scheduling window, after the Olympic selection phase, when public opinion and the media pour almost all their attention towards the United States. In other words, Władysławowo and Sarajevo will hold their tournaments in a year when the spotlight has already been pulled elsewhere.

As for the source, this is an official announcement from the ETTU Executive Board, the highest source tier for this kind of information. There is no dispute, no losing bidder named, no evaluation criteria published. The decision was made by a governing body, on the basis of its own discretion, rather than through a public points-based process.

What draws my attention most here is not the two city names, but the pipeline structure they reveal. The fact that ETTU maintains both an Under-13 and an Under-21 championship shows it operates a two-tier talent pipeline: early identification at thirteen, transition to the senior team at twenty-one. That is a statement about policy, rather than about a single match.

Look at the infrastructure. Cetniewo in Władysławowo is a well-known Polish training base with a long history. When ETTU places the Under-13 event, the earliest talent-identification tier, in such a training centre, the message is clear: this tournament is tied to the development process, rather than to a showcase event. A twelve-year-old walking into Cetniewo will not simply compete; they will breathe the atmosphere of a place where young Polish athletes have grown up for decades.

At the other end, Sarajevo with Arena Hills represents a different ambition: to seed senior-transition infrastructure in an emerging table tennis market in the Balkans. Bosnia and Herzegovina sits outside the group of table tennis powers. Precisely because of that, its hosting of a European Under-21 championship means more than a mere tournament. It brings local investment in facilities, in youth development programmes, in the organising team, things that will remain after the applause has faded.

Commercially, the scale of these two events is small and local. A continental youth event does not carry the equipment-market pull or the broadcast pull of the major adult tournaments. But their value lies elsewhere, in the two-year build-up cycle before the event takes place. When a city is selected to host, the local association typically begins investing in facilities and youth programmes long beforehand. That is a quiet ripple effect that a tournament's balance sheet will never fully reflect.

From a global competitive standpoint, this announcement carries no data about the balance of power between Europe and Asia. It is not a measure of strength. But it is one piece in European table tennis's long-term effort to widen its talent base, an effort that anyone who follows the dominance of Asian table tennis nations understands to be both necessary and difficult.

Now comes the part I think few people want to say out loud. There is a way to read this announcement as good news: European table tennis is investing in the future, giving opportunities to smaller table tennis nations, widening the talent pipeline. But there is a reverse reading, and I believe it is more honest.

The hosting decision was made by the ETTU Executive Board with no publicly stated evaluation criteria whatsoever. There was no points-based process, no list of candidates, no explanation of why Władysławowo and Sarajevo won. That is how a governing body operating on discretion works, and it places the entire credibility of the decision on the reputation of that body itself. For a harmless announcement like this one, it does not matter. But it exposes a habit: sports federations routinely make important decisions without making their basis transparent.

From another angle, I wonder whether placing two youth events in an Olympic year is a wise choice. In 2028, every camera will point towards Los Angeles. An Under-13 event in Władysławowo and an Under-21 event in Sarajevo will take place in the shade. For twelve-year-olds, that may be a good thing, they get to compete without being crushed by media pressure. But for a federation trying to build its image, choosing the right year to shine is also part of strategy. And an Olympic year has never been the year of youth events.

There is one more point I want to state plainly. People tend to undervalue youth tournaments because they have no stars. But precisely because they have no stars, they are where stars are born. Talent is not loud; it lies still in a corner of the court, waiting for someone patient enough. If you look only at adult records, you will never see the moment a child first understands that they can play at this level. Those moments do not appear on a scoreboard. They appear in Władysławowo and Sarajevo, in years no one bothers to record.

I have spent seven years following matches played in empty stands, at tournaments the media does not bother to send reporters to. And what I have learned is always the same: the decisions that shape the future of a sport are rarely the loud ones. They are dry hosting announcements, closed executive-board meetings, city names most fans will forget the moment they finish reading.

Władysławowo and Sarajevo in 2028 will not produce a final for the ages. No one will remember them as a milestone. But somewhere in those two cities, on an afternoon in 2028, there will be a twelve-year-old stepping up to the table with trembling hands, and a twenty-one-year-old standing at the threshold of an adult career. Neither will know that, years earlier, an executive board sat down and decided that this place, this city, was where they should begin.

I do not host to read out results. I only connect the heartbeats of a stand. And if you ask me what to watch over the next two years, the answer is not the rankings. The answer is the preparation progress of Władysławowo and Sarajevo, because that is where the future of European table tennis is being laid.